G overnor Deval Patrick has named MTA member Joni Block to the board of the
Department of Early Education and
Care.

Block, who lives in Foxborough,
has been an early childhood specialist
for the Brockton Public Schools since
2006 and serves as the coordinator of
Coordinated Family and Community
Engagement of Brockton.

She has a master’s degree
in early childhood/special needs
education from Rhode Island College
and a bachelor’s degree in special
and elementary education from
Southern Connecticut State College.

Block began her teaching career
in 1978 in Hanover, where she taught
early childhood and elementary
school children with special needs.

She went on to teach andcoordinate preschool and earlychildhood programs in Merrimack,N.H., and Rockland before becomingan early childhood specialist forthe Massachusetts Department ofEducation in 1990. She has alsoworked at Wheelock College’sgraduate school.

Block said she looks forward
to “working with the board, the
department and the educational
field to continue to improve the
lives of children and families in
the Commonwealth.” She replaces
Carol Craig O’Brien as the teacher
representative on the board.

With her husband, Cliff Shatz,Block also runsa nonprofitorganizationnamed for herdaughter, Rose,who died in anaccident in 2006,when she was

10. Block saidthe organization— named “Rosie’s Rafikis” after theSwahili word for “friends” — helpssupport schools and a medical facilityin a rural village in Kenya. “That’swhat Rose was about — helping andshowing how one person can make adifference,” Block said.

Joni Block

developing world, the physician-scientist is spending time using what
she learns at GITC, which she serves
as a faculty fellow.

Bhatia got to know Baron last year,
when Baron brought her son Elias to
visit Harvard on a college tour. When
Elias began a summer research project
under Bhatia’s guidance, Baron invited
her to a GITC intensive program. She
enrolled, learned basic “Open G” tuning
and was given instruction in how to
write simple songs and lyrics. She
immediately put her new skill to work
in her own classroom, full of aspiring
bioengineers.

Bhatia wrote a song about the
process of laminar blood flow through
the kidneys to the tune of “The Lion
Sleeps Tonight.” The method was a
hit, she said, and truly embedded the
step-by-step biological process into
students’ minds.

She said that while she often deals
with mathematically and scientifically
brilliant students, music training
broadens their skills.

“If you want to build students’math skills,” she added, “have thatchild get involved in music.”Bhatia said the other advantageof using the guitar in particular isthat the instrument “breaks down abarrier” with young people. She saidguitar “more than any other instrumentallows me to relate to my students, andpart of being a good teacher is beingaccessible.”Furthermore, she said, it helps tobe a beginner, showing her studentswhen she plays that she is reallyworking hard. “They are working hardto master engineering, and it makesthem relate,” she noted.

Baron said another reason guitars
work so well with students is that they
build instant social credibility for the
teacher. “There’s an immediate ‘cool
factor’ when a teacher picks one up,”
she said.

She pointed to music’s ability
to lower the “affective filter” in the
classroom, the anxiety that keeps
students from asking questions and
truly joining in. Music, she said,
provides a calming and unifying
environment.

She said GITC is being used more
and more by teachers of special needs
students, who find that the repetition of
the song content makes it predictable.

“There’s no fear of failure, or making amistake, or being shamed,” Baron said.

She said special needs teachers
report that GITC “promotes the
students’ highest behaviors and
improves their verbal skills.” For
these reasons, she said, GITC is also
ideal for students whose first language
isn’t English.

The most often-expressed concern
of teachers, she said, is how to integrate
music as a single-subject teacher.

She used the example of a history
class. “Take creative songwriting,
where students are telling the story of a
historical figure they’re writing about,”
she said. “It wakes up their curiosity.
And what happens when they need
a rhyming line in their song about a
historical figure? Well, they have to go
looking for more information to find
the next line for the song!”

Educators will have a chance
to participate in four Guitars in the
Classroom workshops at the MTA
Summer Conference. Please see the
Summer Conference Guide or visit
www.massteacher.org for details. More
information on GITC is available at
www.guitarsintheclassroom.org.

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